Ensign Flandry

6

Starkad rotated thrice more. Then the onslaught came.

Flandry was in Ujanka. The principal seaport of Kurijsoviki stood on Golden Bay, ringed by hills and slashed by lithe broad brown Pechaniki River. In the West Housing the Sisterhood kept headquarters. Northward and upward, the High Housing was occupied by the homes of the wealthy, each nestled into hectares of trained jungle where flowers and wings and venomous reptiles vied in coloring. But despite her position—not merely captain of the Archer but shareholder in a kin-corporation owning a whole fleet, and speaker for it among the Sisterhood—Dragoika lived in the ancient East Housing, on Shiv Alley itself.

“Here my mothers dwelt since the town was founded,” she told her guest. “Here Chupa once feasted. Here the staircase ran with blood on the Day of the Gulch. There are too many ghosts for me to abandon.” She chuckled, deep in her throat, and gestured around the stone-built room, at furs, carpets, furnishings, books, weapons, bronze vases and candelabra, goblets of glass and seashell, souvenirs and plunder from across a quarter of the planet. “Also, too much stuff to move.”

Flandry glanced out the third-floor window. A cobbled way twisted between tenements that could double as fortresses. A pair of cowled males slunk by, swords drawn; a drum thuttered; the yells and stampings and metal on metal of a brawl flared brief but loud.

“What about robbers?” he asked.

Ferok grinned. “They’ve learned better.” He sprawled on a couch whose curves suggested a ship. Likewise did his skipper and Iguraz, a portly grizzled male who had charge of Seatraders’ Castle. In the gloom of the chamber, their eyes and jewelry seemed to glow. The weather outside was bright but chill. Flandry was glad he had chosen to wear a thick coverall on his visit. They wouldn’t appreciate Terran dress uniform anyhow.

“I don’t understand you people,” Dragoika said. She leaned forward and sniffed the mild narcotic smoke from a brazier. “Good to see you again, Dommaneek, but I don’t understand you. What’s wrong with a fight now and then? And—after personally defeating the vaz-Siravo—you come here to babble about making peace with them!”

Flandry turned. The murmur of his airpump seemed to grow in his head. “I was told to broach the idea,” he replied.

“But you don’t like it yourself?” Iguraz wondered. “Then why beneath heaven do you speak it?”

“Would you tolerate insubordination?” Flandry said.

“Not at sea,” Dragoika admitted. “But land is different.”

“Well, if nothing else, we vaz-Terran here find ourselves in a situation like sailors.” Flandry tried to ease his nerves by pacing. His boots felt heavy.

“Why don’t you simply wipe out the vaz-Siravo for us?” Ferok asked. “Shouldn’t be hard if your powers are as claimed.”

Dragoika surprised Flandry by lowering her tendrils and saying, “No such talk. Would you upset the world?” To the human: “The Sisterhood bears them no vast ill will. They must be kept at their distance like any other dangerous beasts. But if they would leave us alone there would be no occasion for battle.”

“Perhaps they think the same,” Flandry said. “Since first your people went to sea, you have troubled them.”

“The oceans are wide. Let them stay clear of our islands.”

“They cannot. Sunlight breeds life, so they need the shoals for food. Also, you go far out to chase the big animals and harvest weed. They have to have those things too.” Flandry stopped, tried to run a hand through his hair, and struck his helmet. “I’m not against peace in the Zletovar myself. If nothing else, because the vaz-Merseian would be annoyed. They started this arming of one folk against another, you know. And they must be preparing some action here. What harm can it do to talk with the vaz-Siravo?”

“How do so?” Iguraz countered. “Any Toborko who went below’d be slaughtered out of hand, unless you equipped her to do the slaughtering herself.”

“Be still,” Dragoika ordered. “I asked you here because you have the records of what ships are in, and Ferok because he’s Dommaneek’s friend. But this is female talk.”

The Tigeries took her reproof in good humor. Flandry explained: “The delegates would be my people. We don’t want to alarm the seafolk unduly by arriving in one of our own craft. But we’ll need a handy base. So we ask for ships of yours, a big enough fleet that attack on it is unlikely. Of course, the Sisterhood would have to ratify any terms we arrived at.”

“That’s not so easy,” Dragoika said. “The Janjevar va-Radovik reaches far beyond Kursovikian waters. Which means, I suppose, that many different Siravo interests would also be involved in any general settlement.” She rubbed her triangular chin. “Nonetheless … a local truce, if nothing else … hunh, needs thinking about—”

And then, from the castle, a horn blew.

Huge, brazen, bellows-driven, it howled across the city. The hills echoed. Birds stormed from trees. Hoo-hoo! Fire, flood, or foe! To arms, to arms! Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-oo!

“What the wreck?” Ferok was on his feet, snatching sword and shield from the wall, before Flandry had seen him move. Iguraz took his ponderous battleax. Dragoika crouched where she was and snarled. Bronze and crystal shivered.

“Attack?” Flandry cried among the hornblasts. “But they can’t!”

The picture unreeled for him. The mouth of Golden Bay was guarded by anchored hulks. Swimmers underwater might come fairly close, unseen by those garrisons, but never past. And supposing they did, they still had kilometers to go before they reached the docks, which with Seatraders’ Castle commanded that whole face of Ujanka. They might, of course, come ashore well outside, as at Whitestrands, and march overland on their mechanical legs. The city was unwalled. But no, each outlying house was a defense post; and thousands of Tigeries would swarm from town to meet them; and—

Terran HQ had worried about assaults on the archipelago colonies. Ujanka, though, had not seen war for hundreds of years, and that was with other Tigeries … Hoo, hoo!

“We’ll go look.” Dragoika’s gorgeous fur stood on end, her tail was rigid, her ears aquiver; but now she spoke as if suggesting dinner and flowed from her couch with no obvious haste. On the way, she slung a sword over her back.

Blaster in hand, Flandry followed her into a hall dominated by a contorted stone figure, three meters high, from the Ice Islands. Beyond an archway, a stair spiraled upward. His shoulders scraped the walls. Arrow slits gave some light. Ferok padded behind him, Iguraz wheezed in the rear.

They were halfway to the top when the world said Crump! and stones trembled. Dragoika was thrown back against Flandry. He caught her. It was like holding steel and rubber, sheathed in velvet. A rumble of collapsing masonry beat through his helmet. Screams came thin and remote.

“What’s happened?” Iguraz bawled. Ferok cursed. Even then, Flandry noted some of his expressions for later use. If there was a later. Dragoika regained balance. “Thanks,” she murmured, and stroked the human’s arm. “Come.” She bounded on.

They emerged on the house tower as a second explosion went off. That one was further away. But thunder rolled loud in Starkad’s air. Flandry ran to the parapet. He stared across steeply pitched red tile roofs whose beam ends were carved with flowers and monster heads. Northward, beyond these old gray walls, the High Housing lifted emerald green, agleam with villas. He could see the Concourse pylon, where Pride’s Way, the Upland Way, the Great East Road, and The Sun And Moons came together. Smoke made a pillar more tall.

“There!” Ferok yelled. He pointed to sea. Dragoika went to a telescope mounted under a canopy.

Flandry squinted. Light dazzled him off the water. He found the hulks, out past the Long Moles. They lay ablaze. Past them—Dragoika nodded grimly and pulled him to her telescope.

Where the bay broadened, between Whitestrands to west and Sorrow Cliff to east, a whale shape basked. Its hide was wet metal. A turret projected amidships; Flandry could just see that it stood open and held a few shapes not unlike men. Fore and aft were turrets more low, flat, with jutting tubes.

As he looked, fire spat from one of those dragon snouts. A moment later, smoke puffed off the high square wall of Sea-Traders’ Castle. Stones avalanched onto the wharf below. One of the ships which crowded the harbor was caught under them. Her mast reeled and broke, her hull settled. Noise rolled from waterfront to hills and back again. “Lucifer! That’s a submarine!”

And nothing like what he had fought. Yonder was a Merseian job, probably nuclear-propelled, surely Merseian crewed. She wasn’t very big, some twenty meters in length, must have been assembled here on Starkad. Her guns, though of large caliber, were throwing chemical H.E. So the enemy wasn’t introducing atomics into this war. (Yet. When somebody did, all hell would let out for noon.) But in this soup of an atmosphere, the shock waves were ample to knock down a city which had no defenses against them.

“We’ll burn!” Ferok wailed.

On this planet, no one was ashamed to stand in terror of fire. Flandry raced through an assessment. Detested hours and years of psych drill at the Academy paid off. He knew rage and fear, his mouth was dry and his heart slammed, but emotion didn’t get in the way of logic. Ujanka wouldn’t go up fast. Over the centuries, stone and tile had replaced wood nearly everywhere. But if fire started among the ships, there went something like half the strength of Kursoviki. And not many shells were needed for that.

Dragoika had had the same thought. She wheeled to glare across the Pechaniki, where the Sisterhood centrum lifted a green copper dome from the West Housing. Her mane fluttered wild. “Why haven’t they rung Quarters?”

“Surely none need reminding,” Iguraz puffed. To Flandry: “Law is that when aught may threaten the ships, their crews are to report aboard and take them out on the bay.” A shell trundled overhead. Its impact gouted near Humpback Bridge.

“But today they may indeed forget,” Dragoika said between her fangs. “They may panic. Those tallywhackers yonder must’ve done so, not to be hanging on the bell ropes now.”

She started forward. “Best I go there myself. Ferok, tell them not to await me on the Archer.”

Flandry stopped her. She mewed anger. “Apology-of-courage,” he said. “Let’s try calling first.”

“Call—argh, yes, you’ve given ’em a radio, haven’t you? My brain’s beaten flat.”

Crash! Crash!

The bombardment was increasing. As yet it seemed almost random. The idea must be to cause terror and conflagration as fast as possible.

Flandry lifted wristcom to helmet speaker and tuned the Sisters’ waveband. His hope that someone would be at the other end was not great. He let out a breath when a female voice replied, insect small beneath whistle and boom: “Ey-ya, do you belong to the vaz-Terran? I could not raise anyone of you.”

No doubt all switchboards’re flooded with yammer from Our Men In Ujanka, Flandry thought. He couldn’t see their dome in the hills, but he could imagine the scene. Those were Navy too, of course—but engineers, technicians, hitherto concerned merely with providing a few gadgets and training Tigeries in the use of same. Nor was their staff large. Other regions, where the war was intense, claimed most of what Terra could offer. (Five thousand or so men get spread horribly thin across an entire world; and then a third of them are not technical but combat and Intelligence units, lest Runei feel free to gobble the whole mission.) Like him, the Ujanka team had sidearms and weaponless flitters: nothing else.

“Why haven’t Quarters been rung?” Flandry demanded as if he’d known the law his whole life.

“But no one thought—”

“So start thinking!” Dragoika put her lips close to Flandry’s wrist. Her bosom crowded against him. “I see no sign of craft readying to stand out.”

“When that thing waits for them?”

“They’ll be safer scattered than docked,” Dragoika said. “Ring the call.”

“Aye. But when do the vaz-Terran come?”

“Soon,” Flandry said. He switched to the team band.

“I go now,” Dragoika said.

“No, wait, I beg you. I may need you to … to help.”

It would be so lonely on this tower.

Flandry worked the signal button with an unsteady forefinger. This microunit couldn’t reach Highport unless the local ’caster relayed, but he could talk to someone in the dome, if anybody noticed a signal light, if every circuit wasn’t tied up—Brrum! A female loped down Shiv Alley. Two males followed, their young in their arms, screaming.

“Ujanka Station, Lieutenant Kaiser.” Shellburst nearly drowned the Anglic words. Concussion struck like a fist. The tower seemed to sway.

“Flandry here.” He remembered to overlook naming his rank, and crisped his tone. “I’m down on the east side. Have you seen what’s on the bay?”

“Sure have. A sub—”

“I know. Is help on the way?”

“No.”

“What? But that thing’s Merseian! It’ll take this town apart unless we strike.”

“Citizen,” said the voice raggedly, “I’ve just signed off from HQ. Recon reports the greenskin air fleet at hover in the stratosphere. Right over your head. Our fliers are scrambled to cover Highport. They’re not going anywhere else.”

Reckon they can’t at that, Flandry thought. Let a general dogfight develop, and the result is up for grabs. A Merseian could even break through and lay an egg on our main base.

“I understand Admiral Enriques is trying to get hold of his opposite number and enter a strenuous protest,” Kaiser fleered.

“Never mind. What can you yourselves do?”

“Not a mucking thing, citizen. HQ did promise us a couple of transports equipped to spray firefighting chemicals. They’ll fly low, broadcasting their identity. If the gatortails don’t shoot them regardless, they should get here in half an hour or so. Now, where are you? I’ll dispatch a flitter.”

“I have my own,” Flandry said. “Stand by for further messages.”

He snapped off his unit. From across the river began a high and striding peal.

“Well?” Dragoika’s ruby eyes blazed at him.

He told her.

For a moment, her shoulders sagged. She straightened again. “We’ll not go down politely. If a few ships with deck guns work close—”

“Not a chance,” Flandry said. “That vessel’s too well armored. Besides, she could sink you at twice your own range.”

“I’ll try anyhow.” Dragoika clasped his hands. She smiled. “Farewell. Perhaps we’ll meet in the Land of Trees Beyond.”

“No!” It leaped from him. He didn’t know why. His duty was to save himself for future use. His natural inclination was identical. But he wasn’t about to let a bunch of smug Merseians send to the bottom these people he’d sailed with. Not if he could help it!

“Come on,” he said. “To my flier.”

Ferok stiffened. “I, flee?”

“Who talked about that? You’ve guns in this house, haven’t you? Let’s collect them and some assistants.” Flandry clattered down the stairs.

He entered the alley with a slugthrower as well as his blaster. The three Tigeries followed, bearing several modern small arms between them. They ran into the Street Where They Fought and on toward Seatraders’ Castle.

Crowds milled back and forth. No one had the civilized reflex of getting under cover when artillery spoke. But neither did many scuttle about blinded by terror. Panic would likeliest take the form of a mob rush to the waterfront, with weapons-swords and bows against pentanitro. Sailors shoved through the broil, purpose restored to them by the bells.

A shell smote close by. Flandry was hurled into a cloth-dealer’s booth. He climbed to his feet with ears ringing, draped in multicolored tatters. Bodies were strewn between the walls. Blood oozed among the cobbles. The wounded ululated, most horribly, from beneath a heap of fallen stones.

Dragoika lurched toward him. Her black and orange fur was smeared with red. “Are you all right?” he shouted.

“Aye.” She loped on. Ferok accompanied them. Iguraz lay with a smashed skull, but Ferok had gathered his guns.

By the time he reached the castle, Flandry was reeling. He entered the forecourt, sat down beside his flitter, and gasped. Dragoika called males down from the parapets and armed them. After a while, Flandry adjusted his pump. An upward shift in helmet pressure made his abused eardrums protest, but the extra oxygen restored some vitality.

They crowded into the flitter. It was a simple passenger vehicle which could hold a score or so if they filled seats and aisle and rear end. Flandry settled himself at the board and started the grav generators. Overloaded, the machine rose sluggishly. He kept low, nigh shaving the heads of the Tigeries outside, until he was across the river and past the docks and had a screen of forest between him and the bay.

“You’re headed for Whitestrands,” Dragoika protested.

“Of course,” Flandry said. “We want the sun behind us.”

She got the idea. Doubtless no one else did. They huddled together, fingered what guns they had, and muttered. He hoped their first airborne trip wouldn’t demoralize them.

“When we set down,” he said loudly, “everyone jump out. You will find open hatches on the deck. Try to seize them first. Otherwise the boat can submerge and drown you.”

“Then their gunners will drown too,” said a vindictive voice at his back.

“They’ll have reserves.” Flandry understood, suddenly and shatteringly, how insane his behavior was. If he didn’t get shot down on approach, if he succeeded in landing, he still had one blaster and a few bullet projectors against how many Merseian firespitters? He almost turned around. But no, he couldn’t, not in the presence of these beings. Moral cowardice, that’s what was the matter with him.

At the beach he veered and kicked in emergency overpower. The vehicle raced barely above the water, still with grisly slowness. A gust threw spray across the windshield. The submarine lay gray, indistinct, and terrible.

“Yonder!” Dragoika screeched.

She pointed south. The sea churned with dorsal fins. Fish-drawn catapult boats had begun to rise, dotting it as far as one could eye. Of course, trickled through the cellars of Flandry’s awareness. This has to be largely a Seatroll operation, partly to conserve Merseian facilities, partly to conserve the fiction. That sub’s only an auxiliary … isn’t it? Those are only advisors—well, volunteers this time—at the guns … aren’t they? But once they’ve reduced Ujanka’s defenses, the Seatrolls will clean the place out.

I don’t give a hiss what happens to Charlie.

An energy bolt tore through the thin fuselage. No one was hit. But he’d been seen.

But he was under the cannon. He was over the deck.

He stopped dead and lowered his wheels. A seat-of-the-pants shiver told him they had touched. Dragoika flung wide the door. Yelling, she led the rush.

Flandry held his flitter poised. These were the worst seconds, the unreal ones when death, which must not be real, nibbled around him. Perhaps ten Merseians were topside, in air helmets and black uniforms: three at either gun, three or four in the opened conning tower. For the moment, that tower was a shield between him and the after crew. The rest wielded blasters and machine pistols. Lightnings raged.

Dragoika had hit the deck, rolled, and shot from her belly. Her chatterbox spewed lead. Flame raked at her. Then Ferok was out, snapping with his own pistol. And more, and more.

The officers in the tower, sheltered below its bulwark, fired. And now the after crew dashed beneath them. Bolts and slugs seethed through the flitter. Flandry drew up his knees, hunched under the pilot board, and nearly prayed.

The last Tigery was out. Flandry stood the flitter upward. His luck had held; she was damaged but not crippled. (He noticed, vaguely, a burn on his arm.) In a wobbling arc, he went above the tower, turned sideways, hung onto his seat with one hand and fired out the open door with the other. Return bursts missed him. However inadequate it was, he had some protection. He cleared the Merseians away.

An explosion rattled his teeth. Motor dead, the flitter crashed three meters down, onto the conning tower.

After a minute, Flandry was back to consciousness. He went on hands and knees across the buckled, tilted fuselage, took a quick peek, and dropped to the bridge deck. A body, still smoking, was in his path. He shoved it aside and looked over the bulwark. The dozen Tigeries who remained active had taken the forward gun and were using it for cover. They had stalled the second gang beneath Flandry. But reinforcements were boiling from the after hatch.

Flandry set his blaster to wide beam and shot.

Again. Again. The crew must be small. He’d dropped—how many?—whoops, don’t forget the hatch in the tower itself, up to this place he commanded! No, his flitter blocked the way …

Silence thundered upon him. Only the wind and the slap-slap of water broke it, that and a steady sobbing from one Merseian who lay with his leg blasted off, bleeding to death. Satan on Saturn, they’d done it. They’d actually done it. Flandry stared at his free hand, thinking in a remote fashion how wonderful a machine it was, look, he could flex the fingers.

Not much time to spare. He rose. A bullet whanged from the bows. “Hold off there, you tubehead! Me! Dragoika, are you alive?”

“Yes.” She trod triumphant from behind the gun. “What next?”

“Some of you get astern. Shoot anybody who shows himself.”

Dragoika drew her sword. “We’ll go after them.”

“You’ll do no such idiot thing,” Flandry stormed. “You’ll have trouble enough keeping them bottled.”

“And you … now,” she breathed ecstatically, “you can turn these guns on the vaz-Siravo.”

“Not that either,” Flandry said. God, he was tired! “First, I can’t man something so heavy alone and you don’t know how to help. Second, we don’t want any heroic bastards who may be left below to get the idea they can best serve the cause by dunking the lot of us.”

He tuned his communicator. Call the Navy team to come get him and his people off. If they were too scared of violating policy to flush out this boat with anesthetic gas and take her for a prize, he’d arrange her sinking personally. But no doubt the situation would be accepted. Successes don’t bring courts-martial and policy is the excuse you make up as you go along, if you have any sense. Call the Sisterhood, too. Have them peal the battle command. Once organized, the Kursovikian ships could drive off the Seatroll armada, if it didn’t simply quit after its ace had been trumped.

And then—and then—Flandry didn’t know what. By choice, a week abed, followed by a medal and assignment to making propaganda tapes about himself back on Terra. Wasn’t going to work that way, however. Merseia had ratcheted the war another step upward. Terra had to respond or get out. He glanced down at Dragoika as she disposed her followers on guard. She saw him and flashed back a grin. He decided he didn’t really want out after all.